a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Two colleagues and I took a taxi out to Shenzhen late morning for some shopping at Luohu Commercial Center and the Coco Park mall. We encountered heavy traffic on the way back : it’s weekend and the Dameisha streets and beaches were overflowing with Shenzhen city-zens that wanted to enjoy the hot summer weather.
.. and that means some of our colleagues go back to Beijing and Shanghai – and those of us ‘left behind’ get to walk to the Dameisha Sheraton to make our bellies happy with a beer and a burger, or British-style fish and chips. The lobby was quiet this time except for the band downstairs that we could hear. They billed themselves as ‘Taste of Thai’ but nonetheless sang the John Denver classic ‘Country Roads (Take Me Home)’. Aw. For me it is one more week before I get to check up on my home and my friends, and the summer that Seattle has been having while I have been away.
This is the street corner in Da Peng just outside the gate to the nuclear power plant .. busy with pedestrians, traffic and an impromptu street market of sorts. We had a little accident on Wednesday morning with the bus. A car driver tried to overtake us from behind on the inside. Trouble was, the bus was already starting to turn its nose into the open lane, and there was also oncoming traffic. So the car driver could not get out of the way or stop in time. In the end there was just a bad scape on the big fender of the bus but a big dent in the rear door of the car.
The project team went out to dinner on Wednesday night in Shenzhen. All told, we were only 4 Americans in the party of almost 30 people – but we did clink our glasses of beer and wished each other Happy Fourth of July.
Happy Fourth of July! Here is the famous preamble which includes the ideas and ideals that were principles of the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I love the colors on my coaster for the green tea that we were served in a meeting I attended on Monday. The color of the yellow ring is a little washed out. The bird symbol in the center is a crane, probably a red-crowned crane. We may have some here in the green areas around the nuclear power station, but I have not seen any.
Three colleagues and I finally – after all this time in the area! – went to check out the retired Russian aircraft carrier, the Minsk. It is a stone’s throw away from Dameisha, in the Yantian port area.
From Wikipedia : Named after the capital city of Belarus, the Minsk was laid down in 1972, launched on 30 September 1975, completed on 27 September 1978, and decommissioned on 30 June 1993. The Minsk operated with the Pacific Fleet. She was retired as a result of a major accident (details not known) which required the facilities at the Chernomorskiy yard, in Mykolayiv, located in the newly-independent Ukraine (the reasons for not attempting a repair are not known). In 1995 she was sold to a South Korean businessman, and later resold to Shenzhen Minsk Aircraft Carrier Industry Company Limited, a Chinese company.
I thought the long pink balloons (see picture) at a baseball game on Japanese TV was just for the visual effect and waving back and forth, but no : at a given signal everyone let go and up and away the balloons went, and plopped (deflated) back onto the spectators – that was part of the fun. Baseball is very popular but not the national sport (sumo wrestling is). of the league can be traced back to the formation of the “Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club” in 1936. (In the USA, Major League Baseball traces its history back to 1869, the year the ‘Cincinnati Red Stockings’ was established as the first professional team).
The teams all have their fan clubs and websites and each team is a franchise that endorses or markets all kinds of products and events.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Obama’s near-universal healthcare law. Below is Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney on Japan’s NHK TV on Thursday vowing nonetheless to repeal it ‘on Day 1 when I am in office’. And so all the political pundits look forward to him explaining why he is denouncing the federal law – now upheld by the Supreme Court – that is almost identical to the one he championed as governor of the state of Massachusetts. The US Supreme Court held that per the Constitution the US government can tax its citizens, also as a penalty for not signing up for health insurance. Meanwhile, on Tuesday in Japan, Prime Minister Noda pushed through legislation (that still has to be ratified) to double the national sales tax from 5% to 10% starting in 2015 in an effort to reduce Japan’s national debt.
P.S. Tropical storm Doksuri tracked further south of Hong Kong and only brought wind gusts and some rain to us here in Dameisha
It’s very hot out here .. it’s more the steamy humidity that is a problem. There is also the tropical storm named Doksuri approaching (wind and lots of rain), and we’re on a T1 alert. The storm is projected to make landfall in the Hong Kong area early Saturday morning. The symbols and the map are from the Hong Kong Observatory website.
This building is in Capitol Hill in Seattle not far from my house. (The picture is from TIME magazine). There used to be a neighborhood bar in its place where my friends and I would go to many times for a beer! Anyway .. the building is very, very green (energy efficient) and the target for it is to collect energy and use it so sparingly that it can be run ‘off the grid’. I cannot say that the flat roof flush with solar panels does a lot for me from an architectural point of view but hey .. it soaks up the sun rays. (Yes, we do have sun in Seattle!).
‘Blue is back’ says the box of Smarties chocolate bean candies (Nestlé’s version of M&Ms that I bought in South Africa). Yes, but which ones are blue? I see periwinkle and lavender but no blue. Must be the ‘no artificial colours’ that mutes the colors. Aww. I guess Nestlé wants to avoid the situation that Mars candy company had some time ago. Red M&Ms were discontinued from 1976 to 1985 after the FDA banned Red Dye No. 2 — even though M&M’s did not contain this dye.
The pictures are from Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport.
The airport stores are well-stocked with African handicraft and souvenir items, and seemed to be doing a brisk business even though it’s winter time and not the tourist season.
Our Airbus A340-300 was filled to capacity. The number 4 engine did not start properly, though, and we went back to the gate for a check-up.
Take your time, technicians, I thought .. make sure everything is A-OK. All was resolved after 30 minutes, and we were on our way.
I am at Cape Town airport. It’s a 2-hour hop to Johannesburg and then onto a direct flight of 13 hrs to Hong Kong from there. I resisted buying any more Afrikaans books (already bought 4), t-shirts or bottles of South African olive oil that are shaped like Table Mountain !
Here is an unusual license plate I spotted at a traffic stop, so let me decode it for you. I think it says ‘O-o-oh! Western Province’. The Oh as in O Canada, the national anthem, and Western Province is probably a reference to the local provincial rugby team with their venerable striped jerseys. The Western Province rugby team is the arch enemy of the Blue Bulls, the team from up north in the Pretoria area.
I like to look for t-shirts that shows the city or country that I find myself in. This one is by Quiksilver with their wave-and-mountain logo (depicting a tsumani?). And it does explain that the big SA stands for ‘South Africa’. The small print is of South African beaches and surf terms. The most famous South African surf beach – Jeffreys Bay – is missing, though.
Thursday was overcast and cool which made for good picture-taking weather. All the buildings are from the central area of Stellenbosch.
I am staying in the town of Stellenbosch in the Cape Town area with my family for the week. Here are some of my favorite offerings from the big local grocery store – that sells much more than just groceries.
My journey to Cape Town at the southwestern tip of Africa was complete on Monday evening. Here are a few more pictures from the connecting airports.
We arrived at 4.45 am local time with the sun just coming up from the east. So one of two 8 hr flights done, and the next one is due south to Johannesburg.
